From l to r: Amy Small, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Andrew Small. Sen. Durbin has been leading the fight in the Senate to pass The Dream Act of 2017.

Week In Review Commentary

Each one of us has a story to tell about a parent, grandparent or great grandparent that landed on the shores of this country in hopes of building a better life. Many sought refuge from political and religious persecution. They worked hard, struggled and persevered, always striving for the American dream. In the process,
our immigrant relatives helped to build our country. They went to school, got better jobs, purchased homes, and started businesses. They were not very different from today's DREAMERs.

When President Donald Trump rescinded DACA this week, he wiped away the hopes of nearly 1 million immigrants whose lives now hang in the balance. He caused all of us to pause and remember our own immigrant experience.

While immigration reform is not one of JAC's core issues, it is at the core of all of us. We have a moral responsibility to look in our hearts and do what is right as Jews and as Americans. We are all immigrants. If Trump can take on the DREAMERs, then what is he capable of doing with other religious and minority groups?*

Immigration reform has no easy answers. But these DREAMERs deserve the opportunity to continue to contribute to our society. They have gone through extensive background checks. They are hungry to succeed and their perseverance embodies the American spirit. Chasing them back to their countries of birth while putting them in the path of danger, is heartless, cruel and unjustified. Where would we be today if our families had been chased away?

"Let us not fail to remember that minority persecution is the first sign of social disintegration," Hubert Humphrey said in 1945. Sadly It appears not much has changed since then.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Call Congress. Tell your Representative and Senators to
pass the Dream Act of 2017. Phone calls make a difference. Use Facebook and Twitter. Share JAC's information.

Support JAC and its candidates such as Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) who are fighting to protect the DREAMERs.

DREAM Act was meant to give young people (known as DREAMers) a path to citizenship, but stalled in Congress in 2001

In 2007, President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program -- DACA

DACA offered DREAMers a temporary grant of protection from deportation and a permit to work legally in the U.S.

They must have arrived in U.S. prior to 2007 and have been 15 or younger when they arrived and younger than 31 when DACA was created

DREAMERs have passed rigorous background checks, and registered with the government

Most DREAMERs are currently working or in school

DACA does not give them a path to residency

President Barack Obama's Statement on DACA Repeal

DREAM Act Summary

source: VOX

ISRAEL

Netanyahu: Israel's Cooperation With Arab States Has Never Been Greater

"Israel is enjoying a greater level of cooperation today with the Arab world than it has ever had in its history - even greater than it was when Jerusalem signed agreements with Egypt and Jordan," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, who was particularly sanguine about Israel's standing in the world, said that Israel today is "in a different place" than before. He added that the alliance with the United States is "stronger than ever" and there are strong ties with Europe, with openings being made in eastern Europe.

The world's nuclear inspectors complicated President Trump's effort to find Iran in violation of the two-year-old nuclear accord with the United States and five other world powers, declaring that the latest inspections found no evidence that the country is breaching the agreement. Trump has made no secret of his desire to scrap the agreement, even over the objections of many of his top national security officials. But the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency make it harder to create an argument that Iran is in violation.

Israeli jets have reportedly bombed a Syrian government facility in north-west of the country believed to be associated with Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program.
The strikes were initially reported by Hebrew and Arab media sources on Thursday morning. A Syrian military statement appears to confirm the reports.

Berlin's embattled Mayor Michael Müller is under fire from German Jews and antisemitism experts for allegedly tolerating hatred of Israel and a rising BDS campaign in the capital city. The fresh wave of condemnations come in response to an August 28 Jerusalem Postreport that the Simon Wiesenthal Center may include the mayor on its top-10 worst cases of anti-Israel and antisemitic activity in 2017.

Students for Justice in Palestine Sanctioned for Disrupting Pro-Israel Event at UC Irvine

The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of California, Irvine was punished with disciplinary probation for two academic years for disrupting a pro-Israel event held on campus. After the announcement of the punishment last month, the SJP said it would appeal the decision. In addition to the two years of probation, the campus group must hold six meetings a year to discuss free speech, and adhere to a requirement to meet with university administrators two weeks before hosting any event.

The shortage of abortion doctors in the United States has garnered a lot of attention, but the shortage of clinic owners - who put up the capital to set up and maintain locations where those doctors can practice - is also a major concern. Pro-choice organizations are scrambling to train more medical students to perform abortions, but the number of trained doctors doesn't matter if there's nowhere for them to practice.

Texas Survivors of Harvey Can Get Free Abortion Care, With Travel Costs Covered

Whole Woman's Health, a group of clinics that provide abortion care and other health services, announced that it will offer free abortions to women impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Noting that women in the Houston area and elsewhere in southeast Texas may have had to miss abortion appointments during the storm. The group promises to help affected women get to one of the organization's four Texas locations for abortion care at no cost. "Continued political attacks on abortion access make an unwanted pregnancy particularly stressful in Texas-add that to the stress of dealing with hurricane aftermath," the group said.

The Trump administration will replace an Obama-era schools directive on sexual assault, announced Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Advocates slammed the announcement. "Don't be duped by today's announcement," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. "What seems procedural is a blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault. It will discourage schools from taking steps to comply with the law - just at the moment when they are finally working to get it right. And it sends a frightening message to all students: Your government does not have your back if your rights are violated."

Kentucky Could Become The Only State Without A Clinic That Performs Abortions

Kentucky is down to only one clinic that performs abortions. A trial kicking off this week in federal court in Louisville will decide whether Kentucky will become the only state without a single such clinic. (R)Gov. Matt Bevin tried to shut down the EMW center earlier this year after his administration told the clinic that it was failing to meet state health regulations.

All the President's Clergymen: A Close Look at Trump's 'Unprecedented' Ties With Evangelicals

The invitation was unexpected. Would any of the preachers and pastors and other religious leaders, who had come to hear the administration's views on issues they cared about, like to meet the POTUS in person? Trump's close ties with this group of conservative Christian religious leaders is, by all accounts, unprecedented. Evangeelicas have concrete views about a range of issues and make no secret of wanting policy changes.

President Trump's voter fraud commission may have violated federal records laws by using personal email accounts to conduct commission work. The lawsuit states that Justice Department attorneys revealed during a Sept. 1 meeting that commission members have been using personal email accounts rather than federal government-issued accounts to conduct commission-related work.

Who Exactly Is Paying for Neil Gorsuch to Speak at the Trump Tower This Month?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will speak at an event in late September for a conservative group funded by the Koch brothers and dark-money organization Donors Trust. The scheduled appearance raises more troubling questions about Gorsuch's political independence just as the Supreme Court's term-already packed with high-stakes political cases-is set to start in October. And it's not the first time Gorsuch has displayed questionable ethical judgment since appointed to the bench.

How many times must we see this disaster movie-titled Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, along with many lesser- known foreign releases-before we intervene and change the ending? And how long before we hold the ultimate authors of such climate catastrophes accountable for the miseries they inflict? What makes this so infuriating is that it shouldn't be happening. Experts have warned for decades that global warming would increase these sorts of weather extremes and that people would suffer and die if protective measures were not implemented.

If you want to understand the situation facing Congress in September, imagine resolving the thorniest problem you can think of in the space of one month. Now multiply that task by four and add President Trump. In the small number of working days between now and the end of the month, Congress faces the following decisions: passing a bill to avert a U.S. debt default, renewing government funding to avoid a partial shutdown, reauthorizing critical programs including the Federal Aviation Administration, extending funds for health insurance for about 9 million children and agreeing on emergency aid for victims of Hurricane Harvey. And that's all while trying to anticipate the behavior of an unpredictable president.

A large crop of House members are likely to retire in the coming months, not necessarily because President Trump is polarizing, the parties are divided, or Capitol Hill is "dysfunctional" - but because 40 years of history tell us it's going to happen. Since 1976, 22 House members, on average, have retired each cycle without seeking another office. Thus far this cycle, just 5 members fit that description. Democrats could benefit from more Republican retirements in competitive districts to decrease the number of well-funded and established incumbents they must defeat to gain the 24 seats necessary for a majority.

Like the embrace of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in his base, like the Muslim ban, like the legal assault against diversity in college admissions, like the proposed halving of legal immigration and the insistence on an exorbitant symbolic wall, Trump's eviction notice to the Dreamers represents yet another front in one war: the restoration of white power, a second Civil War with a different result. As Jews, we should feel the disgust acutely and organize accordingly.

Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued a rare statement condemning a policy decision of his successor, Donald Trump. "Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we'd want our own kids to be treated. It's about who we are as a people - and who we want to be.
What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals - that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will."

For decades, Israel's espionage agency, the Mossad, kept a file on Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor. He never saw justice. The Mossad failed to apprehend the man who was perhaps the most wanted Nazi to survive World War II. Documents and interviews reveal that contrary to popular belief, for most of the time that Mengele was in hiding, the Mossad wasn't looking for him at all - or placed finding him far down its to-do list.

JAC will present the Shirley Byron Award to Rep. Schiff
for outstanding leadership
Tuesday, October 17

Chicago, IL

Watch for details

Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs (JACPAC) is a pro-Israel PAC with a domestic agenda. We support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and advocate for reproductive health and the separation of religion and state and incorporate other issues of importance to the Jewish community, including gun violence prevention and climate change. In addition to providing financial support for U.S. Senate and House campaigns, JACPAC educates our membership with outreach events designed to inform and activate their participation in the political process.

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